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Making History
Studies in Rabbinic History, Literature, and Culture in Honor of Richard L. Kalmin
Carol Bakhos
SBL Press, 2024
Essays in this volume honor Richard L. Kalmin, one of the leading scholars of rabbinic literature. Volume contributors explore a variety of topics related to Kalmin’s wide-ranging work from the development of the Talmud to rabbinic storytelling, from the transmission of tales across geographic and cultural boundaries to ancient Jewish and Iranian interactions. Many of the essays reflect current trends in how scholars use ancient Jewish literary sources to address questions of historical import. Contributors include Carol Bakhos, Beth A. Berkowitz, Noah Bickart, Robert Brody, Joshua Cahan, Shaye J. D. Cohen, Steven D. Fraade, Shamma Friedman, Alyssa M. Gray, Judith Hauptman, Christine Hayes, Catherine Hezser, Marc Hirshman, David Kraemer, Marjorie Lehman, Kristen Lindbeck, Jonathan S. Milgram, Chaim Milikowsky, Michael L. Satlow, Marcus Mordecai Schwartz, Seth Schwartz, Burton L. Visotzky, and Sarah Wolf.
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Mark, Mutuality, and Mental Health
Encounters with Jesus
Simon Mainwaring
SBL Press, 2014

An incitement to re-assess how society relates to persons with poor mental health

Mainwaring explores the societal contexts of those who suffer poor mental health, and in particular the relational dynamics of how identity, agency, and dialogue are negotiated in personal encounters. This work seeks to serve as an experiment, such that interested readers might better understand the dynamics of relational power that pervade encounters with persons with poor mental health.

Features:

  • Foucauldian analysis of the relational dynamics of poor mental health used to re-imagine hegemonic relational dynamics
  • Close readings of encounters between individual characters to evaluate how mutuality operates in those encounters
  • Study of mutuality as it has emerged in mental health literature, feminist theologies, and theologies of disability
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Matthew within Judaism
Israel and the Nations in the First Gospel
Anders Runesson
SBL Press, 2020

In this collection of essays, leading New Testament scholars reassess the reciprocal relationship between Matthew and Second Temple Judaism. Some contributions focus on the relationship of the Matthean Jesus to torah, temple, and synagogue, while others explore theological issues of Jewish and gentile ethnicity and universalism within and behind the text.

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Matthew’s Parable of the Royal Wedding Feast
A Sociorhetorical Interpretation
Ruth Christa Mathieson
SBL Press, 2023

Ruth Christa Mathieson’s unique reading of Matthew’s parable of the royal wedding feast (Matt 22:1–14), which concludes with the king’s demand that one of the guests be bound and cast out into the outer darkness, focuses on the means of the underdressed guest’s expulsion. Using sociorhetorical interpretation, Mathieson draws the parable into conversation with early Jewish narratives of the angel Raphael binding hands and feet (1 Enoch; Tobit) and the protocol for expelling individuals from the community in Matt 18. She asserts that readers are invited to consider if the person who is bound and cast out is a danger to the little ones of the community of faith unless removed and restrained.

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Meaning and Context in the Thanksgiving Hymns
Linguistic and Rhetorical Perspectives on a Collection
Trine Bjørnung Hasselbalch
SBL Press, 2015

A new reading strategy for the Thanksgiving Hymns

Hasselbalch asserts that current theories about the social background of Thanksgiving Hymns are unable to explain its heterogeneous character. Instead the author suggests a reading strategy that leaves presumptions about the underlying social contexts aside to instead consider the collection’s hybridity as a clue to understanding the collection as a whole.

Features:

  • Systemic Functional Linguistics applied to four Hodayot
  • Analysis that highlights the role of a mediator in the agency of God
  • An approach that highlights the unity of the collection
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Memory and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity
A Conversation with Barry Schwartz
Tom Thatcher
SBL Press, 2014

Essential reading for scholars and students interested in sociology and biblical studies

In this collection scholars of biblical texts and rabbinics engage the work of Barry Schwartz, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology at the University of Georgia. Schwartz provides an introductory essay on the study of collective memory. Articles that follow integrate his work into the study of early Jewish and Christian texts. The volume concludes with a response from Schwartz that continues this warm and fruitful dialogue between fields.

Features:

  • Articles that integrate the study of collective memory and social psychology into religious studies
  • Essays from Barry Schwartz
  • Theories applied rather than left as abstract principles
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Metaphor, Morality, and the Spirit in Romans 8
1-17
William E. W. Robinson
SBL Press, 2016

Engage compelling arguments that challenge prominent positions in Pauline studies

In this innovative book, William E. W. Robinson takes the reader on a journey through Romans 8:1–17 using Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Conceptual Integration Theory. Robinson delineates the underlying cognitive metaphors, their structure, their function, what they mean, and how Paul’s audiences then and now are able to comprehend their meaning. He examines each metaphor in the light of relevant aspects of the Greco-Roman world and Paul’s Jewish background. Robinson contends that Paul portrays the Spirit as the principal agent in the religious-ethical life of believers. At the same time, his analysis demonstrates that the conceptual metaphors in Romans 8:1–17 convey the integral role of believers in ethical conduct. In the process, he addresses thorny theological issues such as whether Spirit and flesh signal an internal battle within believers or two conflicting ways of life. Finally, Robinson shows how this study is relevant to related Pauline passages and challenges scholars to incorporate these methods into their own investigation of biblical texts.

Features:

  • Sustained argument that sheds new light on how Paul communicates with his audiences
  • Substantial contribution to current debates about central theological concepts
  • Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Conceptual Integration Theory applied to the metaphors in Romans 8:1-17
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The Middle Maccabees
Archaeology, History, and the Rise of the Hasmonean Kingdom
Andrea M. Berlin
SBL Press, 2021

A focused, interdisciplinary examination of a tumultuous, history-making era

The Middle Maccabees lays out the charged, complicated beginnings of the independent Jewish state founded in the second century BCE. Contributors offer focused analyses of the archaeological, epigraphic, numismatic, and textual evidence, framed within a wider world of conflicts between the Ptolemies of Egypt, the Seleucids of Syria, and the Romans. The result is a holistic view of the Hasmonean rise to power that acknowledges broader political developments, evolving social responses, and the particularities of local history. Contributors include Uzi ‘Ad, Donald T. Ariel, Andrea M. Berlin, Efrat Bocher, Altay Coşkun, Benedikt Eckhardt, Gerald Finkielsztejn, Christelle Fischer-Bovet, Yuval Gadot, Erich Gruen, Sylvie Honigman, Jutta Jokiranta, Paul J. Kosmin, Uzi Leibner, Catharine Lorber, Duncan E. MacRae, Dvir Raviv, Helena Roth, Débora Sandhaus, Yiftah Shalev, Nitsan Shalom, Danny Syon, Yehiel Zelinger, and Ayala Zilberstein.

Features

  • Up-to-date, generously illustrated essays analyzing the relevant archaeological remains
  • A revised understanding of how local and imperial histories overlapped and intersected
  • New analysis of the book of 1 Maccabees as a tool of Hasmonean strategic interest
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Migration and Diaspora
Exegetical Voices of Women in Northeast Asian Countries
Hisako Kinukawa
SBL Press, 2014

Engage and explore readings from a multi-religious, globalized, multicultural region

The papers in this collection were presented at the third meeting of the Society of Asian Biblical Studies held at the Sabah Theological Seminary, Malaysia in 2012. The essays represent the work of women/feminist scholars in biblical hermeneutics in this region who have raised questions against traditional, male-centered interpretations, offering distinct perspectives based on their experiences of pain, subjugation, and a forced sacrificial philosophy of life.

Features:

  • Articles focused on finding justice for women through dialogue with biblical texts
  • Reflections on migration, diaspora, displacement, discrimination, and conditions generated by poverty and systemic oppression
  • Five essays from women in China, Japan, and Korea
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front cover of Miracle Discourse in the New Testament
Miracle Discourse in the New Testament
Duane F. Watson
SBL Press, 2012
This volume explores the rhetorical role that miracle discourse plays in the argumentation of the New Testament and early Christianity. The investigation includes both the rhetoric within miracle discourse and the rhetorical role of miracle discourse as it was incorporated into the larger works in which it is now a part. The volume also examines the social, cultural, religious, political, and ideological associations that miracle discourse had in the first-century Mediterranean world, bringing these insights to bear on the broader questions of early Christian origins. The contributors are L. Gregory Bloomquist, Wendy Cotter, David A. deSilva, Davina C. Lopez, Gail O'Day, Todd Penner, Vernon K. Robbins, and Duane F. Watson.
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The Mishnah in Contemporary Perspective, Volume 1
Alan J. Avery-Peck
SBL Press, 2016

Now in Paperback!

In the past thirty years, the Mishnah has taken its place as a principal focus in the academic study of religion and of Judaism. Many university scholars have participated in the contemporary revolution in the description, analysis, and interpretation of the Mishnah. Nearly all the publishing scholars of the academy who are now at work are represented in this project. Both essential volumes present a broad selection of approaches to the study of the Mishnah. What they prove in diverse ways is that the Mishnah defines the critical focus of the study of Judaism. It is a document that rewards study in the academic humanities.

Features:

  • The best of contemporary scholarship on the Mishnah
  • The most representative selection of contemporary Mishnah-study contributions available in any collection in a Western language
  • Paperback format of an essential Brill reference work
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front cover of The Mishnah in Contemporary Perspective, Volume 2
The Mishnah in Contemporary Perspective, Volume 2
Alan J. Avery-Peck
SBL Press, 2016

Now in Paperback!

This second volume of a two-part project on the Mishnah displays a broad selection of approaches to the study of the Mishnah in the contemporary academy. The work derives from Israel, North America, and Europe and shows the intellectual vitality of scholarship in all three centers of learning. What these articles show in diverse ways is that the Mishnah forms a critical focus of the study of Judaism.

Features:

  • The best of contemporary scholarship on the Mishnah
  • The most representative selection of contemporary Mishnah-study contributions available in any collection in a Western language
  • Paperback format of an essential Brill reference work
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Mixed Feelings and Vexed Passions
Exploring Emotions in Biblical Literature
F. Scott Spencer
SBL Press, 2017

A ground-breaking collection exploring the rich array of emotions in biblical literature

An international team of Hebrew Bible and New Testament scholars offers incisive case studies of passions displayed by divine and human figures in the biblical texts ranging from joy, happiness, and trust to grief, hate, and disgust. Essays address how biblical characters' feelings affect their relationship with God, one another, and the world and how these feelings mix together, for good or ill, for flourishing or vexation. Deeply engaged with both ancient and modern contexts, including the burgeoning interdisciplinary study of emotion in the humanities and sciences, these essays break down the artificial divide between reason and passion, cognition and emotion, thought and feeling in biblical study.

Features

  • Case studies drawn from multiple genres across the Bible: narrative, prophets, poetry, wisdom, Gospels, and letters
  • Helpful select bibliographies of interdisciplinary resources at the end of each essay
  • Critical balance between theory and practice and between method and close textual analysis
  • Distinctive ancient Hebrew and Greek uses of emotional terms and concepts compared with each other and with evolving understandings in Western culture
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A Most Reliable Witness
Essays in Honor of Ross Shepard Kraemer
Susan Ashbrook Harvey
SBL Press, 2015

Celebrate a trailblazer in the areas of women and re

Celebrate a trailblazer in the areas of women and religion, Jews and Judaism, and earliest Christianity in the ancient Mediterranean

Ross Kraemer is Professor Emerita in the Department of Religious Studies at Brown University. This volume of essays, conceived and produced by students, colleagues, and friends bears witness to the breadth of her own scholarly interests. Contributors include Theodore A. Bergren, Debra Bucher, Lynn Cohick, Mary Rose D’Angelo, Nathaniel P. DesRosiers, Robert Doran, Jennifer Eyl, Paula Fredriksen, John G. Gager, Maxine Grossman, Kim Haines-Eitzen, Susan Ashbrook Harvey, Jordan Kraemer, Robert A. Kraft, Shira L. Lander, Amy-Jill Levine, Susan Marks, E. Ann Matter, Renee Levine Melammed, Susan Niditch, Elaine Pagels, Adele Reinhartz, Jordan Rosenblum, Sarah Schwarz, Karen B. Stern, Stanley K. Stowers, Daniel Ullucci, Arthur Urbano, Heidi Wendt, and Benjamin G. Wright.

Features:

  • Articles that examine both ancient and modern texts in cross-cultural and trans-historical perspective
  • Twenty-eight original essays on ancient Judaism, Christianity, and women in the Greco-Roman world
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My Nine Lives
Sixty Years in Israeli and Biblical Archaeology
William G. Dever
SBL Press, 2020

Experience a lifetime of adventure

This autobiography of prominent American archaeologist William G. Dever is unabashedly his story, in which he offers candid, often brutally honest, reflections on his life and sixty-five-year career. Dever places himself in the midst of a remarkable generation of giants in archaeology in Israel during a period when the fields of biblical and Israeli archaeology were evolving. With technical expertise developed over a lifetime of working alongside four generations of Israeli and foreign excavators, he recalls their exploits and shares numerous personal stories that few others would know. His memoir concludes with a postscript on the likely future of biblical archaeology and an annotated bibliography for serious readers who wish to explore some of the scholarly literature to flesh out Dever’s narrative.

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Myth and Scripture
Contemporary Perspectives on Religion, Language, and Imagination
Dexter E. Callender, Jr.
SBL Press, 2014

An interdisciplinary collection for scholars and students interested in the connections between myth and scripture

In this collection scholars suggest that using “myth” creates a framework within which to set biblical writings in both cultural and literary comparative contexts. Reading biblical accounts alongside the religious narratives of other ancient civilizations reveals what is commonplace and shared among them. The fruit of such work widens and enriches our understanding of the nature and character of biblical texts, and the results provide fresh evidence for how biblical writings became “scripture.”

Features:

  • Essays that explore how myth sheds light on the emergence of scripture
  • Examples drawn from the Ancient Near East, Hebrew Bible, New Testament, and Greco-Roman world
  • Articles by experts from a range of disciplines
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